Socialism
versus
Anarchism
by Daniel De Leon
Price 5b cents
Socialism Versus Anarchism
By Daniel DeLeon
This is the text of an address delivered
in Boston on Sunday, October 13, 1901,
following the assassination of President
McKinley. De Leon shows that the deed
had nothing to do with Socialism. In¬
stead, it was attributable to a philos¬
ophy inherent in class-ruled society—
the belief, natural enough in a less
complex society, that an individual act
can change the course of history, and
that the people do not count. De Leon
also shows that this belief is most
prominently held by the Roman Catholic
political machine, and that virtually ail
the assassins of rulers in modern his¬
tory were the product of that machine.
In developing his theme, De Leon dis¬
poses of the “chessboard theory of his¬
tory,” demonstrates that the masses
do count and proves the validity of the
Marxian, or materialist, conception of
history.
The pamphlet also contains Paul
Lafargue’s “The Police and the Anarch¬
ists,” which illustrates the capitalist use
of anarchists as a weapon against So¬
cialism. An addendum, “Socialist Indus¬
trial Unionism,” outlines the program
of Socialism.
NEW YORK LABOR NEWS
116 Nassau St., Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201
*
The New York Labor News, publish¬
ing department of the Socialist Labor
Party, publishes equally sound litera¬
ture on other subjects touching on the
social question. Send for a free cata¬
logue.
Socialism
Versus
Anarchism
An Address
By DANIEL DE LEON
We have moved
Address mail to:
P.O. Box 70517
Sunnyvale, CA 94086-0517
1970
NEW YORK LABOR NEWS
116 Nassau St., Brooklyn, N. Y. 11201
First edition, 1901; unrecorded editions between 1901 and
1919. New edition, with special preface, 1919. Reprinted,
1921
Amplified edition, with Lafargue essay
and Socialist Industrial Unionism
statement, and additional footnotes, all
new type, January, 1962; December,
1970
(Printed in the United States of America)
Preface
In its preface to the 1919 edition of Daniel De
Leon’s address on “Socialism Versus Anarchism,” the
National Executive Committee of the SLP said:
‘Socialism Versus Anarchism’ is one of those little
gems of lecturing art, delivered upon ‘an occasion,’
which time inevitably makes a classic. The occasion
which brought forth this pronunciamento by the So¬
cialist Labor Party through Daniel De Leon was the
assassination of President William McKinley at Buf¬
falo, N. Y., by the anarchist [Leon] Czolgosz. [Mc¬
Kinley was shot Sept. 6, 1901, and died Sept. 14.]
The assassination of McKinley caused a veritable out¬
burst of blind rage and petty persecution against in¬
dividuals and organizations which professed to any
kind of so-called radical ‘ism.’ Open or covert attacks
were made upon the Socialist movement, with that
unerring class instinct which makes the ruling class and
its henchmen scent in Socialism its real opponent and
take every opportunity to attack it with the fervent
though futile hope of wiping it out of existence. Out¬
rages, by mobs or petty authorities, were committed
against Socialists under the belief, real or assumed,
that Socialists were anarchists. Public outrages were
stimulated and abetted by the capitalist press, which
in every city and state, in its usual glib, ignorant, or
willfully vicious fashion, confounded anarchism with
Socialism as if the two were identical and synonymous.
“The Socialist Labor Party, the true representative
of the Socialist movement in America, saw itself com¬
pelled to make a plain and authoritative statement
5
showing the difference between anarchism and Social¬
ism both in theory and practice. Section Boston of the
Socialist Labor Party arranged a mass meeting with
Daniel De Leon as the speaker. In his usual calm and
logical manner, De Leon traced the doctrine of physi¬
cal force,’ the so-called ‘propaganda of the deed,’ to
its last conclusion, showing that it played its role in
history at an age when the individual, the leader, the
king, the emperor, or whatever the one-man ruler might
be called, was all, and the mass counted for nothing;
showing how this ‘revolutionary method,’ outgrown and
outworn at this time, has stuck in the human concep¬
tion to this day, theoretically fostered by that one
organization—the Catholic Church—in which the Pope
or the priest, that is to say, the individual leader, still
counts for all and the mass counts for less than nothing,
showing the stupidity, the futility in our day and age,
of the methods and the tactics of the anarchists; and
showing, furthermore, how diametrically opposite to
these are the methods and tactics of the Socialist Labor
Party.”
Anarchism in its various manifestations is still use¬
ful to capitalism for lying about Marxian Socialism.
And there have been other “bogeys.” Following World
War I, it was “Bolshevism”; today, it is “Commu¬
nism.” The “Communism” bogey is, of course,
particularly pernicious because of the perilous state of
the world and specifically because of the tensions aris¬
ing out of the imperialist struggle between Western
capitalism and Soviet bureaucratic despotism. The bu¬
reaucratic masters of Soviet Russia claim to be “Com¬
munists,” and “Marxists,” and the capitalists attempt
to use this claim to discredit Marxism among their own
wage slaves. The truth is that Soviet Russia has be¬
trayed every principle that Marx stood for and has,
6
in the name of Marx, created a system in which the
workers are exploited by the State which owns and ad¬
ministers the entire economy and which, in turn, is
controlled by a class of privileged bureaucrats.
In the sense in which Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels used the terms, “Communism” and “Socialism”
are synonymous. Both stand for a classless, State-less
society in which the means of social production are
owned socially and administered democratically by the
workers in the interest of all the people. But in the
sense in which “Communism” is popularly construed
today, that is, as descriptive of the Soviet system, it is
the very antithesis of Socialism.
De Leon’s speech, although designed to serve an
immediate purpose, is immensely instructive today for
the light it throws on the evolution of society, and on
the lofty character and philosophy of Socialism. Thus
De Leon shows how vital it is that the “revolution”
first take place in the minds of the workers. “The ini¬
tial revolution must be accomplished in your minds,”
he said. “You must have divorced yourselves from the
habits of thought that have been used to your enslave¬
ment; you must have come to an understanding that
you are the sole producers of all wealth. . . . you must
have raised yourselves to appreciate your high mission
in the evolution of society, in that only the economic
program of your class is about to abolish the slavery
of the race.”
Ironically, yet logically, although the charge of
anarchy against Socialism is a false charge, easily
proven to be false, the same charge against capitalism,
and specifically against the capitalist economic system,
has obvious validity. The whole competitive system is
anarchistic. It has made of society a veritable economic
jungle in which the potentialities of abundance for all,
7
which inhere in modern means of social production, are
crushed in a raw-boned struggle for private capitalist
advantage.
Following the speech itself, there were questions
and answers which we include in this edition. Apart
from the interest De Leon’s answers to questions from
the floor awaken in the reader, they constitute remark¬
able evidence of his profoundly logical mind, and of
his ability to apply fundamental principles on the spur
of the moment.
8
The Speech
Ladies and Gentlemen: The voices of those little
ones 1 induce me to introduce my own introduction with
an observation of Victor Hugo’s. On a certain occasion,
when the French Revolution seemed to be in danger
(and you understand by the French Revolution not the
decapitation of anybody, but the overthrow of the
feudal system), more than one is said to have gathered
courage from hearing, while walking the streets of
Paris, the little children singing “Ca Ira” (“It will suc¬
ceed”). Victor Hugo, in his own peculiar language, said
on the subject: “The voices of those children,that is the
voice of the immense future.” It matters not whether
these children are aware that a Socialist Labor Party
meeting is being held here or not. Let us take it as a
good omen that the voices of these little ones echo,
outside of this hall, the cheers that, inside, have greeted
the introduction of a Socialist Labor Party speaker.
(Applause.)
Before taking up my subject, allow me to make a
few introductory remarks, which may, or may not, be
necessary in this instance; or may be necessary only to
a very limited extent; or possibly may be necessary to
a very extended extent.
All those of you who remember the recent vulgar
attacks upon the Socialist Labor Party on the part of
the Republican press, which manufactured “Socialists,”
1 After the applause had subsided in the hall, the speaker,
before starting again, was compelled to wait until the noise
raised by some urchins on the street had stopped, who, hearing
the cheering in the hall, took it up and kept at it for a few
seconds.
9
and put into their mouths cheers for the assassin of
McKinley; all those of you who remember the equally
obscene assaults by the Democratic press, which en¬
deavored to connect Czolgosz directly with the Social¬
ist Labor Party; all those of you who recollect the vul¬
gar language hurled from the Protestant and Jewish
pulpits, lumping Socialism and anarchism in one; all
those of you who remember the immoral attitude struck
by the princes of the Roman Catholic hierarchy of this
country, who, forgetful of their claim that they are
“teachers of morality,” have, on the occasion of the
Buffalo tragedy, resorted to the immoral act of falsify¬
ing the tenets and principles of Socialism; all those
of you who remember the language of the politicians,
Democratic and Republican, on this subject, may pos¬
sibly expect of me that I am going, this afternoon, to
hit back. Nothing of the sort. The sun hits not back
against the dark clouds that may gather in its face;
neither does the Socialist Labor Party.
The Socialist Labor Party, like all truth, can bide
its time; and in the meantime proceed serenely along
its way. To hit back increases disorder because it in¬
creases animosity. I come not to hit back. What I come
for is to enable those gathered here—to the extent that
I can within the limited time that is physically possible
for a person to address you on so broad a question—
to pick their own way; to give you tips, as it were, that
may aid you in unraveling the complicated problem
that this question of anarchism brings up, that the shot
of Czolgosz has raised into prominence.
Indeed, the great social question cannot be en¬
tered, perhaps, by a better gate than the gate which
not anarchism suggests, but which the anarchistic forces
of society try to raise as a barrier against the Socialist
Labor Party and the Socialist movement.
io
The social question has been justly called the great
solvent, that great ocean, into which all rivers of
knowledge flow, and to which all the departments of
intellectual upbuilding are tributaries. It is hard to say
that this, that, or the other of the numerous sub-ques¬
tions is the most important. I shall not say that the
questions raised in the public mind by the word an¬
archism are the most important; but what I do main¬
tain is this: That this question involves a tactical issue;
and that that tactical issue is today of the greatest
importance.
With these preliminary remarks I shall begin, but
first I must bring in another little preliminary. It is
suggested by a book review in one of the New York
papers of this very morning. At the risk of advertising
a very stupid book, and a still more stupid reviewer, I
shall mention their names. I hold here the New York
Sun of this morning. It contains a certain book review.
The author of the book is a gentleman who has per¬
petrated works of this nature before. His name is John
Rae. He has written a book called “The History of
Socialism.” God help Socialism and God help history!
(Laughter and applause.) I have marked and picked
out of this review three of the statements which the
reviewer has taken and dishes up as choice morsels
from Mr. Rae’s book. These passages will serve me
as landmarks during my address to you and will help
me to make clear my argument. Let me read them.
The first is: Mr. Rae characterizes anarchism as
“the latest and most misshapen offspring of revolution¬
ary opinion.” I shall show you that anarchism is not
the latest, but, so far from being the latest, is the very
oldest conception of a revolutionary movement. I shall
show you that it is old, stale, and played out. (Laugh¬
ter and applause.) I shall show you that it is the child
of infant social organization. I shall show you that
whatever manifestation of it we have today is purely
an atavistic revival of an old, old idea.
The next statement that I think of importance to
quote is this: He says: “The anarchists of Boston,”
and I quote it because you are of Boston, “for example,
are individualists; one of the two groups of English
anarchists in London is individualist”; and Mr. Rae
(reading from the review) points out that these in¬
dividualist anarchists are very few in number anywhere,
and he maintains that the mass of the party whose
deeds excite abhorrence on both sides of the Atlantic
are undoubtedly more socialistic than the Socialists
themselves.” I shall show you that he who connects
anarchism with Socialism commits in the domain of
sociology as great a blunder as he who, in the domain
of natural science, would say that the eagle belongs to
the same species as the eel in the zoological scale.
The last clause in the analysis of Mr. Rae’s book
by this reviewer that helps me out and that I shall
quote is this: He says: “It is said to be a subject of
speculative discussion among the anarchists whether
two members are sufficient to constitute an anarchist
club. The dread of subjection to authority keeps them
disunited and weak. A small group may concoct an
isolated crime, but it can do little toward bringing
about a social revolution.”
Mind you, this is the opinion of the author, con¬
densed by the reviewer, and is given as a pearl of
thought. I shall show you that the man who wrote that
does not know the first thing about history. I shall
show you that these individualistic outbreaks have ac¬
complished wonderful revolutions in their time, but in
days gone by. I shall show you that, as humanity pro¬
gresses, individual acts wane in strength, and I shall
12
show you why, today, they are simply flashes in the
pan; consequently that this wholesale denunciation of
individualistic revolutions, individualistic shots and
individualistic assassinations, as acts incapable of ac¬
complishing great results, shows that these gentlemen
have no conception of what anarchism really means, or
where it has its roots.
Anarchism and Assassination
Now to the subject. Of course, whatever makes
much noise is considered by the superficial observer as
the thing. Now, particularly, with anarchism, the noisy
part of anarchism is not the essence of anarchism. One
anarchist who fires a shot, one anarchist who throws a
dynamite bomb, or one anarchist who today assassinates
a President, has his name flashed from one end of the
country to the other to such an extent that people, who
are themselves itching for notoriety, are so envious of
him that they pass resolutions declaring that his name
shall not hereafter be mentioned at all. Assassination
is not an essential part of anarchism.
You get assassination as a possible, but by no means
an inevitable, incident of anarchism. Anarchism does
not imply homicide, however natural its development
in that direction may seem. Anarchism is essentially a
gubernatorial or governmental conception — a con¬
ception of government in social society.
A conception of government is a reflex of social
conception; and that social conception in its turn is
based upon, not what we would like, or what we would
fancy to be the desirable thing, but upon what material
conditions dictate. You take your present raspingly
noisy and unseemly elevated in Boston, for instance;
it is not what you would like; but it is a reflex of the
conditions of things and capabilities of the time; and
13
that reflex takes tangible form in the best way people
know and are physically able to meet a certain condi¬
tion of things.
Now, what is the social conception that lies at the
root of anarchism? I can hardly illustrate Socialism
better than by drawing clear the essence of anarchism.
With that as a background, then Socialism, the reason
therefor, what it means and the tactics to reach it,
spring naturally to the eye.
Anarchism’s Concept of Government
What, then, is that governmental conception that
manifests itself as anarchism? What that social con¬
ception is the reflex of, I shall not start with stating.
I shall mention some leading historic events, and thus
enable you to answer the questions yourselves.
Take one of the leading epochs in ancient history.
We there come across a monumental being. His name
has come down to our days; he has given names to
cities; his sayings, his words, his conduct, have become
proverbial. That man was Alexander, named the Great.
He built an empire that lapped over both sides of the
Euxine [Black Sea] ; he conquered the formerly un¬
conquerable Greeks; he spread eastward over the great
empires of the Assyrians and Babylonians, or what¬
ever names they had. His empire swamped Egypt, and
raised the city of Alexandria, with all that it implied.
That empire was the largest empire, properly speaking,
using the word in a semi-technical sense, the largest
the world had yet seen. Alexander was its head.
One day, Alexander died. What became of his em¬
pire? Immediately upon his death, it shattered into a
dozen different fragments. Without Alexander the em¬
pire of Alexander came to naught. The death of that
14
man was not brought on by homicide. His death is
attributed to “a natural event in the course of nature.”
The fact that interests us most just now is what hap¬
pened when that great Alexander died. What hap¬
pened was the death of his empire. Leave that as one
instance.
Now let us take up another series of events. It is one
less palatable than the one just mentioned to the Jewish
rabbis, the Protestant and Catholic pulpiteers whom 1
referred to in opening. But that is not my fault; it is
theirs. The series of events which I now propose to
mention is taken from the Bible. You know that the
elect of the Lord backslid very frequently. On one
of these occasions they fell under the control of a
wicked race called the Moabites. Thereupon they
groaned under the yoke of the Moabites many long
years.
Finally, in the language of the Bible, “God raised
up a judge to Israel.” His name was Ehud. He looked
around, and saw the oppression of his nation, and
made up his mind to put an end to the oppressors. How
did he go about it? By warring against the Moabites?
No. The king of the Moabites was a gentleman by the
name of Eglon, described as “a very fat man.” Ehud,
who is described as “left-handed,” provided himself
with a dagger; hid it under his garment; secured a pri¬
vate interview with Eglon, who was thrown off his
guard seeing Ehud’s right hand unarmed; and, sud¬
denly using his left hand, grasped his dagger, and, in
the language of the Bible, “thrust it into Eglon s belly,
so that “the haft went in after the blade, and the fat
closed upon the blade” and stuck fast.
15
Exit Eglon, not alone, but every mother’s son of
the Moabitic oppressors. With the death of King
Eglon the rule of the Moabites was at an end as ab¬
solutely as if Ehud’s dagger had transfixed every single
Moabite in transfixing Eglon. That much for the claim
of the review I have read from, that individualistic
acts are barren of results.
Take another event, also from the Bible. It is a
celebrated one, one that has passed into art, furnish¬
ing poets and painters with the subject for many a
great production. It is the story of Judith and Holo-
fernes.
King Nebuchadnezzar, as he is called in the Book
of Judith, allowed his eyes to roam around, and caught
sight of the Jews, and decided to conquer them.
Holofernes was appointed the general of that conquer¬
ing army. He carried everything before him, and fi¬
nally reached Judea with an army over a hundred
thousand strong. With that he encamped near Bethulia.
The Jews were hard pressed; the water had been
turned away from them; talk of surrender began to
be heard.
At that critical moment a woman stepped forth.
She consulted no one; she confided her plan to no one,
not even to the maid servant that she took along. She
arrayed herself at her best, and sallied forth from the
city toward the camp of Holofernes, before whose tent
she soon arrived, the soldiers readily making way for
her. In the beautiful language of the Bible, as near as
I can recall it, “her sandals ravished his senses, and
her countenance took his mind prisoner.”
To make a long story short, one night, as Holofer¬
nes lay in the stupor of sleep on his couch, Judith took
16
his falchion, cut off his head, and returned home with
it. The decapitation of Holofernes was equivalent to
the decapitation of every individual in his vast army.
That army vanished as completely as the first thin layer
of snow vanishes on the streets of New York when
struck by the torrid sun of southern Europe; it van¬
ished even more completely, leaving not a wrack behind.
This was a great result. It put off for many a
hundred years the day when the fiat of time was to be
recorded, and the Roman emperor placed upon the
ramparts of Jerusalem the stone effigy of a pig with
impudently curled tail as the seal of Gentile subjugation
of the Jewish Acropolis. A more “autonomous” or
“individualistic” act can ill be conceived; nor one more
fruitful of result.
Capture Paris and You’ve Taken France
Let us now take a long leap forward into modern
history. You have watched contemporaneous events in
France. “Paris,” down to a very recent date, stood for
“France.” In the successive crises witnessed in that
country, whatever coterie of capitalist interests cap¬
tured Paris captured France “for good measure.” And
Paris stood for “the government.” Whoever took the
government had the nation.
Draw nearer to our own country. What is the spec¬
tacle presented on this head by our neighbor republic,
Mexico? The railroads have in more recent date taken
from revolutions the chance of success they once en¬
joyed. But until then, how stood it? The chieftain, or,
say, the interests clustered around such a chief, who
aimed at controlling the people, simply marched upon
the capital. “The capital” stood for “the government.”
17
He who pocketed the government bagged the people.
And finally, stepping upon our own soil, and coming
down to the immediate present, what is the spectacle
that is being presented just now in our Empire City
of Greater New York? A fierce municipal campaign
is raging there between the forces of capitalism, aligned
along the lines of Fusion or “reform,” on the one side,
and the party in power, Tammany Hall, on the other.
What is it all about? Corruption — undeniable,
openly admitted or silently conceded — is rampant in
the municipal government. Do the “reform” forces,
with Seth Low 2 as their fugleman, take the people
of the city into account? Do they recognize that the
precariousness of livelihood among the toiling masses,
the racking nervous strain to “keep up appearances
among the shoddyocracy, the slipperiness of the foun¬
dation of their affluence among the plutocracy; do
they take into consideration that these popular condi¬
tions necessarily breed an atmosphere of social im¬
purity, whose exhalations are bound to manifest them¬
selves in governmental impurity and corruption?
Not in the slightest! The Seth Low column of fused
Republican and Democratic capitalists—granting for
the nonce the honesty of their declamations—proceeds
from the principle that it is all-sufficient to decapitate
2 Seth Low, capitalist and former president of Columbia
University, was elected reform Mayor of New York City in
1902. His "Fusion” party (Republicans plus some “good govern¬
ment” Democrats) administration was succeeded in time by
that of Fiorello LaGuardia, who served as Mayor from 1934
to 1945. Tammany continued to thrive and has been in the
saddle ever since. The capitalists may have saved on taxes
during the reform administrations, but the workers were un¬
affected one way or the other by “good government.”
I 8
Tammany Flail with the falchion of a “reform gov¬
ernment” in order to establish governmental purity;
with the decapitation of Tammany Hall it is expected
that impurity and corruption in the city will have
been decapitated; aye, decapitated as effectively as the
empire of Alexander the Great died when he died;
as effectively as the Moabite oppressors of the Jews
were stabbed to death by the dagger with which Ehud
stabbed to death the Moabitic king; as effectively as
the hundred and odd thousand soldiers of Holofernes
were beheaded with the falchion with which Judith cut
off their general’s head; as effectively as the France of
the first half of this century was successively captured
by the successive revolutions that captured Paris; as
effectively as the Mexican people were bagged by the
chieftains who pocketed the capital of the Republic;
mark you, as effectively, and upon the same principle,
as the shot of the anarchist Czolgosz was expected by
him to kill capitalist domination by the killing of the
President of the nation. [Applause.]
Chessboard Concept of Society
No need of multiplying examples. The mental kin¬
ship of all these instances is obvious. From them leaps
to view the identical governmental conception together
with the social conception of which it is the reflex. And
what is that? It is obviously the social conception that
the people do not count in society, except, at best, as
food for cannon [laughter and applause] ; that govern¬
ment, accordingly, is something outside of, separate
and apart from, and superimposed upon the people
from above.
It is the chessboard conception of society. One may
• 9
have all his men on the board, but if his king is check¬
mated, the game is lost. Your opponent may have
pawns, bishops, knights, rooks and queen, but if you
have crowded his king to where he must surrender,
then all his bishops, his pawns, his rooks, his knights,
and even his queen, go for naught. And that conception
is the essence of anarchism. [Cheers and applause.]
All else in anarchism are but incidents and results that
flow from this central principle. [Applause.]
Now, then, as you may begin to perceive, this
anarchist conception of society and of government was
natural enough, and in place, at a certain social stage.
How much in place, and what sort of social stage, you
may have an inkling of from the illustration furnished
by Alexander’s empire, and from the effectiveness with
which that conception of society was applied in the
instances of Ehud and Judith, together with many other
instances that these two readily suggest.
On the other hand, from the other instances cited,
and the many more you can readily think of, together
with the common experience of the declining effective¬
ness with which that anarchist conception of society is
applied down to our own days, when its application
regularly suffers shipwreck, as illustrated by the utter
failure that attends and must inevitably attend all the
“purity movements” that we have seen spring up peri¬
odically in the land; from all this it will be clear that,
from the social conditions in Asia Minor and Palestine,
many centuries before Christ, to those of the United
States in the twentieth century; from the days of Ehud
and Judith to those of Czolgosz and Seth Low [laugh¬
ter and applause], a steady change has been going on,
until, today, the old anarchist conception of gov¬
20
ernment no longer fits with actual social conditions.
[Applause.]
Now, then, what is the reason the Ehuds and
Judiths succeeded, while, today, the Czolgoszes and
Lows have failed, and will continue to fail? Before
going to the bottom of the matter, and detailing the
fundamental and remote, it is well first to point out
the immediate reason.
The immediate reason is a sociological develop¬
ment pregnant with significance. It is this: For reasons
that I shall presently take up more fully, the masses
are stepping more and more upon the stage of history,
and not as “supers” or scene-shifters, but as stars
in the performance. [Applause.] They counted for
naught—except as “supers” and scene-shifters—un¬
der the industrial order when Ehud and Judith figured.
They gradually begin to count for more and more;
the history of the principalities of northern Italy and
the Hansa towns of Germany is interesting reading on
the early stages of this transformation.
Under the modern industrial order, the masses
have grown into society. And not a few of the epileptic
fits that capitalist society is being continually thrown
into are the result of the attempt on the part of the
capitalist class to ignore, while seeking to profit by, the
change; they are the result of the efforts of that class
to brace itself against the Niagara-like torrent of evo¬
lution that has removed government down and away
from the skies and planted it on earth, and that marks
it flesh of the people’s flesh, and bone of their bone,
part and parcel of, inseparable from, society. [Ap¬
plause.]
The further back one traces the race, the fewer are
21
concerned in the government; the fewer are so con¬
cerned, the more natural, because the easiest, is the sys¬
tem of effecting changes—aye, improvements—by “dis¬
patching” the government.
The further we move forward, the more intimate
becomes the blending of “government” with the rest
of society; in even step the system of “dispatching” a
government, whether by assassination or some newer
method, grows more barren in results: To the Red
Terror ever succeeds the White; the individually be¬
nign McKinley is succeeded by the Spiked-Police-Club
Roosevelt. 8 [Applause.]
The anarchist conception of government and mod¬
ern social conditions is not the least of the glaring con¬
tradictions that capitalist-ruled society groans under.
It foments civilization, and yet it incites to barbarism.
It is no accident, for instance, that Balthasar
Gerard, the assassin of William the Silent, a leader in
the Protestant Revolution (there is an interesting his¬
toric event in this connection that I hope I may remem¬
ber or have time to touch upon later); that Jacques
Clement, the assassin of Henry III of France; that
Ravaillac, the assassin of Henry IV, also of France;
and, coming down to the history of our own days, that
Kullman, the would-be assassin of Bismarck; Santos,
the assassin of President Carnot of France; Bresci, the
assassin of King Humbert of Italy; Luechini, the as¬
sassin of the Empress of Austria; Algoncillo, the as¬
sassin of the Spanish Prime Minister Canovas del
3 Theodore Roosevelt, former New York Police Commis¬
sioner, then Governor of New York State, and then President.
As Police Commissioner, Roosevelt advocated the use of
spiked police clubs.
22
Castillo; it is no accident that all of these, down to
Czolgosz, were Catholics. 4
It is no accident that these were all brought up by
the Roman Catholic hierarchy during the tender years
which that same hierarchy recognizes as the most im¬
portant in shaping the future man’s mind. I say it is no
accident. Not, indeed, that the Roman Catholic hier¬
archy makes it a practice of preaching assassination;
not that. But that—unable, as it would seem, to free
itself from its patriarchal and subsequent feudal habits,
and becoming in our days the handmaid of the capital¬
ist system of despotism—it instills into its pupils, not
the today true and elevating principle that government
is a reflex of social conditions, but the today false and
degrading theory that social conditions are a reflex of
government: a theory that by exaggerating the value
of the individual act, by thus inflating the individual
4 Jacques Clement, the assassin of Henry III, was a
Dominican friar. His deed was encouraged by the Catholic
League of Prance. The Encyclopedia Rritannica notes that
the murderer was “regarded as a martyr and extolled by
Pope Sixtus V, while even his canonization was discussed.”
Ravaillac, the killer of Henry IV, wanted to become a Jesuit.
The Jesuits were the theological defenders of political murder,
notably in the works of the Spanish Jesuits, Juan de Marina
and Francisco Suarez. In a biography of Suarez, an American
Jesuit summarized Suarez’ justifications of murder and con¬
cluded: “. . . no private person can take to himself the right
ta slay the king unless he were commissioned by the community
or its lawful representatives [the Catholic League, for ex¬
ample!]. He will then be acting in the name of the State and
on public authority. Likewise, when the [murder] sentence
has been imposed by the Pontiff [the Pope], the deposition
and slaying can be achieved only by the person, or persons,
appointed by him.” (“Man of Spain,” by Joseph H. Fichter,
S.J., bearing the “Imprimatur” — “It may be printed” — of
Cardinal Spellman, and published by Macmillan, 1940.)
2 3
self-love, needs but to fall upon favorable soil to in¬
evitably breed the assassin. [Prolonged applause.]
A great woman, George Eliot, has called the at¬
tention of the race to the following principle of investi¬
gation : The important thing is not to find that in which
things, seemingly alike, are unlike; the important thing
is to ascertain that which things seemingly unlike have
in common, or are alike in.
The naturalist has proceeded on these lines. In es¬
tablishing, for instance, the cardinal point of contact
between a huge elephant and the wee little mouse, the
domain of natural philosophy was immensely enlarged,
and no slight insight was gained into the scheme of
nature.
And the naturalist has pursued this line further.
He has not rested content with the examination of the
large types only, after taking up such large formations
as the elephant, the rhinoceros, the giraffe, etc., he
turned his attention to the minute insect; and rich is
the store of information thereby garnered.
The interrelation of animal life thus ascertained
has been invaluable in the comprehension of life and
evolution. I wish in this study of anarchism to proceed
upon the same lines. My investigation, so far, was con¬
fined to such huge formations as the Republican party,
the Democratic party, the capitalist reformers, to¬
gether with their Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant
clerical varieties. These are all like elephants, rhinoce¬
roses, giraffes, etc., in the sociologic menagerie of
anarchism. I now want to descend to the insect world
of the same family. It will materially help to round up
our information.
24
Another Variety of Anarchist
There is in the political domain of this country an
insect known as “Kangaroo Social Democracy. 5
[Laughter and applause.] Let us take a pin; let us
stick that pin into that insect; let us hold it up and ex¬
amine it. We shall find a striking connection between
it and the elephant-like, rhinoceros-like, giraffe-like
anarchist creatures we have been sticking the scalpel
into. [Applause.]
You will—all of you who are at all informed—
agree with me that the golden dream of the Kangaroo
Social Democracy is to capture the Socialist Labor
Party. The mere existence; the posture; the activity;
the high grade vitality; the mental, moral, and physical
fiber of the Socialist Labor Party have been a veritable
nightmare to the Kangaroo Social Democracy, to such
a point that the Socialist Labor Party actually deprives
the insect of all equipoise. The Kangaroo Social De¬
mocracy wishes fervently to capture, and, if it cannot
do that, to kill the Socialist Labor Party.
With this end in view, what is the plan of campaign
that the insect has adopted and pursues? Has it been
to work upon and win over the Socialist Labor Party
members, or kill off them? No! All of you, approxi¬
mately informed upon the subject, will agree that the
plan the insect adopted and pursues was, which?—to
5 The reference is to an element originally in the Socialist
Labor Party who, in defense of capitalist unionism, attempted
to capture the SLP. Failing in this, the “kangaroos” — so
named by DeLeon after the “kangaroo courts" of Civil War
times_jumped (like their prototypes) to safety when ex¬
posed into the Social Democratic party, which furnished the
basis for the so-called Socialist party.
25
kill off the Editor of The People! [Laughter and ap¬
plause.] Look at what passes for “literature” in their
camp, and is issued as such by them; look at the word
of mouth “agitation” they carry on. There is no capi¬
talist class to be fought, no wage slavery to be over¬
thrown; there is only one “wicked man” to be killed
off—the Editor of The People. [Laughter.]
Whatever calumny could do, whatever chicanery
could do, whatever backbiting could do, whatever
malicious forgery could do, the insect has resorted to.
with a view to killing off that one man, to whom it
attributes headship in the Socialist Labor Party. In
other words: the Kangaroo Social Democracy has
acted obedient to the same notion that guided the
Ehuds of old, and that guides the Czolgoszes and
Lows of today; to wit, the anarchist notion that by
killing off an officer supposed to be clothed with head¬
ship, his organization is killed along with him, or falls
a helpless booty into the hands of his slayer. [Ap¬
plause.] In other words, the anarchist tactics of the
Kangaroo Social Democracy betray its anarchist con¬
ception of organization, and brand it anarchist. [Ap¬
plause.]
The Socialist Labor Party is an organization of the
twentieth century, and of twentieth century conditions.
No man makes the Socialist Labor Party. [Applause.]
It is the Socialist Labor Party that makes its men. And
the truth hereof is exemplified at every turn by the
shipwreck that attends every anarchist attempt upon
the sane, broad, practical, and unflinching democracy of
the Socialist Labor Party. [Applause.] Its officers
have not dropped down into their positions from the
26
sky. They are a product of the organization. [Ap¬
plause.] Vain, because anarchistic, is the imagining
of anyone who, aiming at capturing or killing off the
organization, merely aims at capturing or killing off
its officers. He who aims at capturing or killing off the
Socialist Labor Party must address himself to the task
of capturing or killing off the Socialist Labor Party
itself. [Loud applause and cheers.]
Now, if you have followed me so far, looking from
one end to the other end of the gamut—from the
basso profundo of the Democratic party and the Re¬
publican party up to the Catholic hierarchy and the
Jewish and Protestant pulpits, till you finally reach the
penny-whistle treble of the Social Democracy—you will
find written over all their faces, as clear as it is possible
for a man to see who has eyes to see — anarchism.
[Loud applause.] Anarchism backward; anarchism
forward.
The Social Force of the Masses
The difference between these and the outspoken
anarchists—in that the former imagine conditions can
be changed by the mere capturing of governments,
while the latter hold that conditions can be changed by
the mere decapitations of governments—is a difference,
not of kind, but of variety. They both belong to the
same species, the mark of which is that conception of
government—correct at one time, rendered less so
from social cycle to social cycle until today it is pre¬
posterous—that consists in holding that government
is something outside, separate and apart from the
people. [Applause.]
Now, against that conception the Socialist Labor
27
Party stands out alone in the United States. It says
today, at the present stage of civilization, there is no
reform worth speaking of that is possible by simply
monkeying with the government. You must educate
tne masses first. [Applause.] You cannot move faster
than the masses move with you in this twentieth cen¬
tury. Aye, even in Russia the masses have a good deal
to say. In some countries they are active forces, in
other countries, passive forces; but forces, social
forces, they have become all the same.
Consequently the Socialist Labor Party cannot
preach in one place a doctrine that it denies in another
place; it cannot preach a doctrine in one place that is
based upon one theory, and in another, preach the
same doctrine, backing it up by another theory; in
other words, it cannot play the role of a double-faced
siren, and indulge in the practices that one and all of
the organizations—clerical and lay—which I have
mentioned indulge in. You must take the individual
and revolutionize him. The revolutionizing of the in¬
dividual develops the necessary head which society re¬
quires to progress.
I think it was from this very platform that, a few
years ago, in an address entitled “Reform or Revolu¬
tion,” I treated this matter in detail. To run rapidly
over the principles there laid down, they were as
follows:
Under the social system where the tool of produc¬
tion is so small that every single man can operate it
himself, he, under that social system, owns his tool,
and, along with that, owns the product of his toil. If
he started without implements of labor, he could easily
28
acquire them. He was the architect of his own fortune.
Production at that stage had not a few satisfactory
features; it had, however, a very unsatisfactory one.
The individual producer could not produce enough
to free himself from that animal condition of having
to grub for his material sustenance all his life. Man
aspires to freedom from the necessity of worrying as
to how he will live, or whether he will enjoy shelter.
Man’s ambition is to be free from that; and the po¬
tentiality of his freedom in that direction increases in
even step with the perfection of the implements of
labor.
Hand in hand with this development goes another.
The more perfect the tool of production becomes, the
more are men compelled to cooperate in production.
I am almost tempted to have that blackboard brought
forward to prove the point. It is a point almost sub¬
ject to mathematical demonstration. Cooperation is the
topnotch flower of improved machinery. Cooperation
brings about a multiplication of the fruitfulness of
labor many times more than the amount the individual
could raise. If ten men produce a certain quantity in¬
dividually, under the cooperative labor superinduced
by the modern perfected machine they would produce,
not ten times as much, but a hundred times more.
However free man may be, there are things he
cannot rise above. He cannot rise above material evolu¬
tion. He would like to fly to San Francisco to reach a
sick friend’s bedside, but he is compelled to submit to
his physical inability to go any faster than inventive
29
science makes it possible. 6 Man is compelled to co¬
operate, so that the productivity of labor shall be so
large that he can enjoy leisure and develop himself
intellectually.
In Massachusetts, old-time farming, individual
farming, was self-supporting after a style. The father
plowed, and carpentered, and built the shanty, the
mother and the daughters spun, and the boys as they
grew up helped the father, unless they became peddlers
like Huntington and grew rich by the merchant’s
process of selling both purchaser and goods. So long
as they remained at home they could do the work
among themselves.
The individualistic farmer was self-supporting, and
consequently was exposed to all the evils that beset the
beasts of the jungle. Those farmers alternated between
a feast and a fast; in cases of drought or a failure in
the crops, they had to suffer prolonged hunger. The
work of these people was arduous and continuous;
there was little time for educational development.
The histories of New England people, as written
by Massachusetts writers themselves, picture the old-
time intellectual expansion at a very low level. The
songs they sang, the kind of music they performed,
etc., etc., are all very suggestive. I suggest that litera¬
ture to you for your edification. It was a low level of
intellectuality, of course above a certain minimum. It
told at all points of arduous, culture-nipping toil.
6 Material evolution worked fast in this case. Inventive
science soon made it possible to do what DeLeon mentions
here. As science and technology held the possibility of per¬
fecting a plane capable of transcontinental flights, so the so¬
cial scene of today contains the requirements for Socialist
reconstruction.
30
Economic Interdependence
That changed by degrees with the introduction of
the perfected machine, together with the increased
productivity of cooperative labor that the improved
system of production forced upon the people. The final
aspect which the change brought on is that, today, no
one man in the United States is any longer independent
of all others. Today, no one city, county, or state is
any longer independent of any other city, county, or
state.
The Massachusetts weavers could not work if
the miners in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and as
far west as Kansas, did not dig for coal; and the miners
of Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, and Kansas could
not work if the farmers did not produce grain; and
the farmers could not do their work if the shoemakers
of Massachusetts and other industrial centers did not
furnish them with shoes; and none of them could exist
if the great railroads of the country did not transport
their products. Today there is absolute cooperation.
Now, under such a system of production there must
be a central directing authority, a government. As
Marx puts it, a single violinist can be his own director.
He raps himself to order, he puts his violin to his
shoulder and sets his music to suit himself; he plays
fast or slow, loud or otherwise, and stops whenever it
suits him; but if you want an orchestra, if you want to
have that combination of tones that comes from co¬
operation and an even assortment of musical instru¬
ments; if you want the blending of the bass drum, the
cornet, the cymbal, and the flute with those of the
violoncello then you must have an orchestra director.
31
If you have not got a director, you may have a
Louisiana Negro breakdown, or something of that
sort, but you cannot have musical harmony.
Likewise in this productive system of today. It is
a large orchestra of production. In order to conduct
this productive orchestra there must be a central di¬
recting authority. Under such social conditions, the
central directing authority, the government, is like the
skin on a man’s body.
The thought occurs to me that it is not only the
capitalist politicians, professors, and pulpiteers who
are anarchists. The quack advertisers also come under
that category, intellectually. You may have noticed the
advertisement of quack doctors, advising, for instance,
the use of John Jones’s Skin Ointment: “it will give
you a beautiful complexion and remove all pimples.’’
True, it may remove the pimples from a certain
spot of the body; but below the skin, it is as foul as
ever and productive of fresh pimples. It is absurd to
say that you can remove impurities in that way; and
it is just as absurd to imagine that you can remove
the modern ills that afflict a people merely by either
changing its government or decapitating the govern¬
ment altogether.
The nerves and muscles and veins and bones, of
which this modern orchestra of production is made up,
are aching, and the disease manifests itself in the ugly
pimples that crop up on the surface of the skin—the
capitalist governments that reflect the conditions of
society. The social nerves, muscles, veins and bones
do not ache because they do not produce enough. They
ache because they are drained of the wealth they pro-
32
duce. They ache because all the advantages of their
cooperative labor flow, not to them, but to a social
abscess that has shaped itself within the body social.
That social abscess is the capitalist class. They ache
because not only are the advantages that flow from
cooperative labor turned away from them, but because
these advantages are turned against them, straining
them to the point of breeding nauseous impurities.
The mere change, or the mere abolition of the gov¬
ernmental pimple can, obviously, bring no improve¬
ment, whatever else it may do. False pretenses will
not stead. Purity, no more than freedom, can come
to a people from the outside. As those who would be
free must themselves strike the blow, so must that
social lever named “government,” to be used to es¬
tablish freedom and purity, evolve from within.
People who have the anarchist conception of gov¬
ernment have not yet learned the lesson that every
boy has learned who has climbed up a tree, and
watched the eggs hatch in the bird’s nest, and seen the
wings and the feathers of the wings sprout out of the
body itself, until the bird takes flight. That boy knows
that wings could never stead the bird to fly with if
fastened on from the outside. They must grow from
within. They must be a structural limb of the body. So,
at all points, with “government.” [Applause.]
First Step: Revolution in the Mind
Consequently, today, arrayed against the whole
clerical and lay anarchistic conception of government,
which, logically enough, produces such assassinations
as the recent one in Buffalo, and to which such idiotic
campaigns as the municipal campaign now on in New
33
York are closely akin—arrayed against the whole pack
stands the Socialist Labor Party. [Applause.] It says
to the workingman: True enough, you must seek to
capture the government; true enough, you must aim at
the overthrow of the present government; but not as
either a finality or a starter. The overthrow of the
government you must aim at must be to the end of
using the governmental power to perfect the revolution
that must have preceded your conquest of the public
powers. [Applause.] The initial revolution must be
accomplished in your minds. You must have divorced
yourselves from the habits of thought that have been
used to your enslavement; you must have come to an
understanding that you are the sole producers of all
wealth. [Applause.] You must have been able to draw
the logical conclusion that the capitalist class is a para¬
site on your backs. [Applause.] You must have raised
yourselves to appreciate your high mission in the evo¬
lution of society, in that only the economic powei of
your class is able to abolish the slavery of the race.
[Loud applause.] You must, in consequence, have first
learned what use to make of the government, when
gotten; to wit, to use it as a social lever with which to
establish the Socialist Republic and install the govern¬
ment that our needs require and that civilization
needs. 7
7 DeLeon delivered this address in 1901, before he had
worked out the program of Socialist Industrial Unionism. The
development of this program added new meaning to Marx’s
statement: “. . . the working class cannot simply lay hold of
the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own
purposes.’’ Four years later, in his “Socialist Reconstruction”
address, De Leon stated that if Socialist candidates triumphed
at the polls there would be nothing for them to do but “to
adjourn themselves, on the spot, sine die. Their work would
34
Accordingly, the Socialist Labor Party says not to
the workingmen: Vote the Socialist Labor Party ticket.
It explains to them why they should vote that ticket, and
it adds: If you do not yet understand why, then, for
heaven’s sake, cast not your votes with us, because,
when elected, the Socialist Labor Party, the govern¬
ment you shall have chosen, must, in order to be ef¬
fective, be something, not outside, not separate and
apart from you; it must be flesh of your flesh and bone
of your bone; it must have men at its back. [Prolonged
applause.]
There is a providential dispensation in what is
going on. The question is often put in these days,
whether perhaps this Czolgosz affair might not cause
the vote of the Socialist Labor Party to go down.
What of it? What would be the meaning of the vote’s
going down? It would simply mean that the men who
leave the Party at this election voted for it at the last
election when they were not fit for the ranks of the
Socialist Labor Party. [Applause.] It would mean
that in that part of the structure for the emancipation
of our people which the Socialist Labor Party is rear¬
ing the ground had sagged. It would mean that the
ground would have to be pounded harder to make a
more solid foundation.
Yet all these things that happen are like sponges
which the providential surgeon puts to the body to
absorb the pus and all impurities that do not belong
be done by disbanding.” Socialism would be established by the
Socialist Industrial Union, which would be the successor to
the capitalist social structure and the capitalist government.
See “Socialist Reconstruction of Society” and “Industrial Un¬
ionism: Selected Editorials."
35
there. [Laughter.] If the shot of Czolgosz takes votes
from us, those votes never belonged to us. [Applause.]
If a freak political movement comes up and if anybody
thinks he can make a short cut toward social revolu¬
tion, let him try it and find out. He will come back to
us, if he is worth having. [Applause.] If the Demo¬
cratic party comes out with a plank to “smash the
trust,” and numbers of our previous voters go away
toward them, I say, “Wayward brothers, go in peace,”
One thing however, the whole gamut of the
anarchist organizations—clerical and lay—in the land
cannot do, and that is to cause the banner of the So¬
cialist Labor Party to be lowered one inch. [Loud and
prolonged applause and cheers.] The Party will carry
on its work of education despite anything that may
happen. It carries on that work encouraged by the
knowledge that it is making progress. It carries it on
encouraged by the knowledge that the revolution is
being perfected in the minds of hundreds and of thou¬
sands of men in the nation.
The Party carries on its work of education en¬
couraged by the knowledge that some day, somehow,
something is bound to rip. And then, at that crisis,
when the people, who have allowed themselves to be
misled from Mumbo Jumbo to Jumbo Mumbo, will
be running around like chickens without heads, there
will be one beacon light in the land burning as clear
in that darkness as it is burning ’midst the clouds to¬
day; one beacon, whose steady light will serve as
guide; whose tried firmness will inspire confidence, and
whose rockribbed sides will serve as a natural point of
rally from which to save civilization. [Prolonged
cheers.]
36
In conclusion, let me place on record a cheering
fact that may be gathered from amidst the present
chaos of thought that the country is in. You have seen
during the last two months all the forces of anarchism
combining the great powers they wield to the end of
exploiting the Buffalo tragedy. Their instinct guided
them correctly. All the warring factions of capitalist
society, whatever label—clerical or lay—they wore,
joined in one common assault on the Socialist Labor
Party. Fx*om Barnegat to Puget Sound they fanned
the sparks of rowdyism in the land, and sought to
incite the populace to deeds of violence against the So¬
cialist Labor Party.
And yet, despite all the forces of this mighty on¬
slaught, they failed. Here and there and yonder,
breaches of the peace were perpetrated against the
Party. But the instances were isolated; they were in
no manner commensurate with the efforts put forth
to bring them on.
What signifies this wondrous manifestation? Nega¬
tive though its significance is, it discloses the cheering
fact that a healthy undercurrent is animating our peo¬
ple; it discloses the cheering fact that the ruling forces
of anarchism no longer command the unqualified con¬
fidence of the masses; it confirms the estimate that,
as our America was the land in which the death-knell
of feudalism was struck, so it will be here that the
death-knell of capitalism will sound, and the birth
chimes of the Socialist Republic will ring. [Prolonged
cheers and applause.]
37
Questions
At the close of the address, the chairman of th<*
meeting, Mr. James A. Bresnahan, opened the floor
for questions, and passed the gavel to the speaker. The
following questions were then put, and answered by
the speaker:
Mr. Abraham Brownstein (Social Democrat).
The speaker made a remark in one part of his lecture
which, it seems to me, contradicts certain statements
which he makes in another part of his lecture. In one
part of his lecture the speaker remarked “that all those
who do not quite understand the reason why they have
to vote for the Socialist Labor Party ticket, for
heaven’s sake, let them not vote for it.” Now I will
ask him: What does the Socialist Trade and Labor
Alliance mean by forcing its members to vote for the
candidates of the Socialist Labor Party, and if not,
they are compelled to be thrown out of their job? Now
supposing that a certain trade is organized in the So¬
cialist Trade and Labor Alliance, 8 and a certain per¬
son does not believe in the doctrines of the Socialist
Labor Party; he is naturally, according to the Socialist
Trade and Labor Alliance, thrown out of that labor
union, or is compelled to vote the Socialist Labor Party
ticket.
8 The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance was organized
in 1895 and was shortly thereafter endorsed by the Socialist
Labor Party- It openly adopted the goal of Socialism. In 1905
the ST&LA was merged in the newly organized Industrial
Workers of the World.
38
The Speaker. I stated that when we address people
for the Socialist Labor Party we tell them: “If you are
not ready to accept our positions, for heaven’s sake,
don’t vote our ticket.” Now, he says, isn’t this in con¬
tradiction to a certain position which he calls attention
to, namely, his declaration that we compel people who
are members of the Socialist Trade and Labor Al¬
liance to vote our Socialist Labor Party ticket, or
get out. I am delighted he has asked that question. It
furnishes one more proof that whoever tries to assault
the Socialist Labor Party position must begin by fur¬
nishing himself with convenient premises by making
false statements. [Applause.]
The gentleman has quoted my words correctly, but
he has falsified the constitution of the Socialist Trade
and Labor Alliance. There is no truth in the premises
he has set up that we compel people in the Socialist
Trade and Labor Alliance to vote the Socialist Labor
Party ticket. The charge, as made by the gentleman, is
stale. It has been made often before from the same
source, and it has been as often demonstrated to be
false.
The position of the Socialist Trade and Labor Al¬
liance is plain. It is this: In view of the fact that the
labor fakers run the trade organizations for capitalist,
and therefore corrupt, political purposes, have them¬
selves elected and announced as “presidents” and “sec¬
retaries,” and then appear on the capitalist political
platforms as leaders in their bodies; in view of the
fact that they try to get office in these trade organiza¬
tions for the purpose of appearing to the politicians as
having the membership of the unions in their pockets;
in view of these well-known facts, the Socialist Trade
39
and Labor Alliance declares in its constitution that no
officer (officer, mind you) of the Socialist Trade and
Labor Alliance shall take any active part in any politi¬
cal party unless it is the Socialist Labor Party. [Great
applause.] Hold on, I am not yet through with this
chap. Mind you, the Socialist Trade and Labor Al¬
liance does not say even to the officers, “You must vote
the Socialist Labor Party ticket.” It does not even say
to the officers, “You must be a member of the Social¬
ist Labor Party.” Not at all! The pledge amounts to
saying to them: “W^e shall not allow you to officiate as
candle-bearers for capitalist political parties by
trafficking upon the prestige of your position as an of¬
ficer of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance. We
do not say that an officer must be active in politics for
this, that, or the other party; we do not say that he
shall be active for the Socialist Labor Party; but the
Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance does say that if
he is at all active for any political party, then his ac¬
tivity must be for the Socialist Labor Party.
Now see the difference there is between saying to a
man, “You shall not be an officer of this organization
unless you pledge yourself that if you are at all active
in any party that party must be the Socialist Labor
Party,” and compelling him to vote the Socialist Labor
Party ticket if he desires to become a member of the
Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, as the gentleman
has falsely charged. It will be a cold day when any
Kangaroo will catch the Socialist Labor Paity in a
contradiction. [Great applause.]
Economic Roots of Protestantism
Dr. Harriet Lothrop. How about the history of
40
the Protestant Revolution helping to illustrate the sub¬
ject of today’s address?
The Speaker: I am glad to be reminded of that.
The Protestant Revolution had no chance of making
headway until the guild-masters had succeeded very
materially in stripping their apprentices of very many
of their privileges, which prevailed under the feudal
system, and were safeguarded by the Roman Catholic
Church. Each trade was formed into a guild, and every
guild was under the guild-master, who took ap¬
prentices. These apprentices were treated as “gentle¬
men’s sons.” They learned the master’s trade; they ate
at his table, they enjoyed with him all the holidays of
the Roman Catholic Church, of which there are fully
one hundred a year; not infrequently, they wound up
by marrying the master’s daughters.
Under that system the guild-master could not ex¬
ploit his apprentices. Capitalism had no show. He be¬
gan by chopping off their privileges, one after the
other, until the apprentice sank to the level of a
menial, and was relegated to the cook. In Dickens’
“Barnaby Rudge” you will get a fair picture of this
stage in the apprentice system. In the popular ballads
of the period the apprentices complained that formerly
they used to eat turkey, whereas now they never tasted
the bird; that whereas formerly they were given “wine
to drink, they had now to drink bilge-water.”
The guild-master having thus squeezed the ap¬
prentices down—both in starving them and in knocking
more work out of them by taking away from them
one holiday after the other—grew wealthier. He was
the capitalist in embryo. Before that, and during the
early stages of this development, there were numerous
4i
“uprisings” against the “Red Harlot,” as the Protes¬
tants styled the Roman Catholic Church. But these up¬
risings, on the Continent and in England, all came to
naught, bloodily so. It was not until the guild-masters
Had made sufficient progress on the lines of exploiting
their apprentices, and had taken away almost all the
Roman Catholic festivals from them; it was not until
the point was reached when the guild-masters’ interests
were, accordingly, arrayed against the interests of the
Roman Catholic hierarchy; it was not until then that
there was an economic, material foundation for the
alleged religious movement named “Protestantism.”
The guild-masters were, of course, Protestants. A
revolution had been accomplished in the ranks of the
people. And thereupon Protestantism won out. The
connecting point between this subject and the subject
° ?ft^ rnoon ’ s address is that the anarchists on
t e theological field, especially the professional atheists,
imagine religions, meaning creeds, can be set up,
changed or overthrown by cashiering parsons, priests,
or rabbis. They have failed to learn the lesson taught
y ociahsm upon the relation there is between society
an government,” and learned by Socialism from the
latest" 168 ° f CreedS ’ thC Pr ° testant creed amon S thtf
Transformation of a Prayer
Another, perhaps still more comprehensive, illus¬
tration may be quoted. It is furnished by the Jews.
Ihe greatest prayer the Jews have, and the most re-
markable prayer, at that, is not a prayer directed from
man to God. It is a prayer directed from man to man.
In that prayer they say: “Hear, oh Israel,” do not do
42
this bad thing or that bad thing; do this and that good
thing, etc. To what end? To the end that they may
soon go to heaven? Oh, no! To the end that they may
live long on this earth. And no wonder; that prayer,
when originally gotten up, had a broad economic
foundation.
At that time the Mosaic laws controlled, and under
that system there was to be every five years a Jubilee;
there were other larger Jubilees, and there was to be
every fifty years a Grand Jubilee. At that Grand
Jubilee, there was to be a complete readjustment of
property. These Jubilees were a sort of vast and com¬
prehensive bankruptcy law. Under that system there
was a guarantee against perpetual and hereditary
want. Accordingly, the Jewish people did not pray
that they might die and go to heaven. In that prayer
of theirs they admonished one another to behave well
in order that they might live long.
But when, despite all the Jubilees, the Roman
legions came along, and mowed down men, gathered
in all the wealth they produced, and carried it back
with them to Rome; when that Roman patrician class
turned the world into a Valley of Tears, then people
turned their eyes toward heaven as an asylum. With
that changed social order, a changed order of prayers
arose; then the “Lord’s Prayer” made its appearance;
then sprang up a new creed, the Roman Catholic creed,
adapted to then existing social conditions. [Great
applause.] 9
Ferdinand Lassalle, a thinker of deep penetration,
9 This point is developed in Gustav Bang’s “Crises in Eu¬
ropean History,” published by New York Labor News Co.
43
indicates that the Roman Catholic Curia itself is well
aware of the historic foundation of its creed. In a
magnificent passage of his great drama, entitled
Iranz von Sickingen,” he introduces a dialogue be¬
tween two dignitaries of the Roman Catholi/curia
one of whom, a Cardinal-Legate, observes that the
danger lay, not in Luther, but in Erasmus and Reuch-
Im, who were awakening in the people a taste for a
paradise on earth. He understood that the danger lay
m economic conditions, backed by teachings, that
should induce man to pray to God to keep him as long
as possible away from heaven, so that he might enjoy
e certain pleasures of a terrestrial paradise. [Ap¬
plause and laughter.] 10 L *
(Social Democrat). My question is
a upon the theory that has been expressed this after¬
noon, that by killing the head of an organization it
ocs not say that the organization itself is killed. Yet
in the ancient history which we nave heard today it is
entirely different [laughter], and then the conclusion
leads to that. [Laughter.] The speaker has mentioned
that when you kill the Editor of the Socialist Labor
t afty P* per ’ thereb y y° u have also killed the Socialist
Labor Party, because— [Laughter, and cries of “Sit
down. ] I understood that the speaker said, that by
killing the Editor of the Socialist Labor paper in some
way, you may just as well kill the Socialist Labor Party.
[Several voices: “Sit down.” Laughter.] I understood
“oniJf 1 Lassalle drama, the Cardinal complains of the
spirit of the now and here on earth,” of the inspiration of a
nobler mankind in the breasts of those who had been satisfied
with a promise of the hereafter. He warns that humanfsmtnd
science were raising “an evangel of man”; that is™ncem fo?
appens on earth and for the betterment of man’s lot.
44
that the speaker said that. I wanted the speaker to ex¬
plain how he contradicts himself in that by saying that
today to kill the president of an organization does not
affect the organization, and yet at the same time he
mentions that by killing the Editor of the Socialist
Labor paper you kill the Socialist Labor Party.
[Laughter.]
The Speaker. Every man or woman present who
heard me say what this man says I said, let him raise
his right hand. [No hand was raised.] Now all those
who know that he is falsely stating what I said, please
raise your hands. [Practically all the hands were
raised.] This question also illustrates what kind of
people rise up, with malice marked on their faces,
against the Socialist Labor Party. One of them mis¬
quotes a printed statement, another has the impudence
to declare, in your very presence, that I said things
here which are just the reverse of what T did say.
Your question has been answered by the audience. You
will take your seat, sir. [Applause.]
Mr. Fred J. Boyle. The attitude of the Socialist
Labor Party is well known on the armory question.
Now, if a member of the Socialist Labor Party were
elected to the city council of a city, and the question
should come up of making an appropriation of
$15,000 for the police, what would be the attitude o
the Socialist Labor Party on that question?
The Speaker. I do not know whether all of you
are informed on what, no doubt, is back of this ques¬
tion. Let me, therefore, state what I consider the
source of this gentleman’s question to be before
answer it. ,
In Haverhill [Massachusetts], a man by the name
45
of James Carey, a Social Democrat ([Laughter. Ap¬
plause from one person.]—that solitary handclap is a
good illustration of the popularity of Mr. Carey out¬
side of a Democratic party crowd. [Laughter and ap¬
plause.] Now then, the person who has the intense ad¬
miration of that lone man in this hall, voted for a
$15,000 appropriation for an armory in the city of
Haverhill. Thereupon the Socialist Labor Party pitch-
forked him, and has never let up.
He first explained,” saying that unless he voted
as he did he would have been punished by the state
laws. That was shown to be false.
Then he “explained,” saying that, if he had not
done as he did, the city of Haverhill would have been
liable to a fine. That false pretense was also knocked
down.
Then he explained, saying that it was necessary
that the appropriation should be made as a sanitary
measuie, for the old armory, he said, was in an un¬
sanitary condition That crook’s “explanation” was
also knocked down by showing that if the bullets that
killed workingmen on strike were sanitary bullets, they
were not any less deadly, and in the capitalists’ inter¬
est, than the unsanitary ones. [Laughter.]
Thereupon that paragon of duplicity and treason
to the workers, after several other contortions, re¬
sorted to this, his latest “explanation”: “Look,” said
he, at the Social Democracy in Germany; see how the
Social Democracy in Germany votes for appropriations
for the sanitation of the German Army, and shall not
I, a genuine Social Democrat, vote for appropriations
for the sanitation of an American armory?”
[Laughter.]
46
In other words, he dared no longer to lie; he now
started to insinuate a lie. The lie here insinuated is
that there is any point of comparison between the
German Army and the American militia, between the
American militia, made up of young whippersnappers,
mostly sons of capitalists, who go into it for fun and
for the purpose of killing strikers when they turn out,
and a body like the German Army, which every man is
compelled to join, and the majority of whom are work¬
ingmen. In the latter case the men are supported by
that Army; they are taken from their trades and occu¬
pations and homes for three or four years, and of
course it is necessary that the barracks in which they
live shall be kept in a sanitary condition. But here,
especially with the militia, it is quite different. Here we
have a lot of youngsters who go into the militia, not
because they are compelled to; the regiment does not
give them a penny; it costs them money to keep it up,
or keep themselves in it. There is no comparison be¬
tween the two. Of course, we cannot favor appropria¬
tions for such purposes as that. [Applause.]
Now, by the light of this explanation, we can ap¬
proach the question of appropriations for police. Nine-
tenths of the policeman’s work consists in protecting
the property in the hands of those who have it; that
is, the capitalist class, the robber class. That robber
class has its property, not by reason of its having
worked for it, but by reason of its holding the instru¬
ments of production, which enable it to sponge up the
wealth produced by the workingman.
But the policemen have other duties besides pro¬
tecting the capitalist class in the possession of its stolen
property. They have to stand on the streets, and pre-
47
duties b Th kade r and T SW£r 9 ue stions, and similar
thJr 1 ThC P ° Ilceman there exercises a social function
arge aggregations of people render necessary. In
Boston, I suppose there are certain streets where po-
icemen have to be placed in order to prevent block-
aaes ana to make passing safe.
In New York there are many such streets. For in¬
stance, in the neighborhood of City Hall in New York
t ere are three or four streets on which two policemen
must be stationed on both sides of the street. Those
thoroughfares are crowded with numerous trolley lines
and other vehicles of traffic. People would be killed
right along if policemen were not stationed there all
t e time, to give the signal to vehicles when to stop or
when to proceed, and protect foot-passengers. That is
a social function. The whole of New York is repre¬
sented there by that work.
Now, the question is: What would the Socialist in
office do under those circumstances in matters of ap¬
propriations ? I should say that, under those circum¬
stances, the Socialist would look carefully into all the
circumstances and see what the money is to be ex¬
pended for. If the appropriation is demanded in order
to put that policeman in proper woolen clothing during
cold weather and proper thin clothing during warm,
in older that he may be protected properly from the
weather while fulfilling that useful social function,
then I should say it would be the bounden duty of all
Socialists to vote for such an appropriation.
If, however, the appropriation is demanded for the
purpose of furnishing the police with a certain kind
of brass buttons for their coats, those brass buttons
to be bought of a certain patentee, the wife of a cer-
48
tain gentleman who is a factotum of a Republican
leader [this actually happened recently in New York],
then the Socialist Labor Party would vote NO.
[Applause.]
Again, if the appropriation is to give the police¬
men night billies or “riot” billies—that is to say, to
arm them against workingmen on strike—then it would
be the duty of the Socialist Labor Party to vote NO,
and NO forevermore. [Applause.]
Mr. A.H. Simpson (anarchist). I would like to
ask the speaker whether there are not high anarchist
authorities who would agree with the speaker that gov¬
ernment is an outgrowth of conditions, and that edu¬
cation would be a means of extirpating that form of
government? And I would like to ask the question,
if he will not favor us with two definitions, one social¬
istic and one anarchistic?
The Speaker. The last part of the question shows
to me that the gentleman has missed all I said about
“government” as understood by Socialism. I certainly
shall not attempt to give a coherent definition of what
anarchists understand under “government.” Their own
utterances on the subject are too incoherent for that.
They run all the way from the Ben Tucker 11 notion
of a chairman with autocratic powers, and from whose
decision there is no appeal, to the vagaries and mysti¬
cisms of a headless body. [Laughter and applause.]
Mr. W.H. Carroll. I have here a copy of the Con¬
stitution and By-Laws of the Socialist Trade and La¬
bor Alliance. I would like to ask the speaker to read
11 Benjamin R. Tucker (1854-1939) was a "Yankee anarch¬
ist” and pacifist.
49
the portion which shows that it is false to claim one
must vote for the Socialist Labor Party to be a mem¬
ber of the Alliance.
The Speaker . The passage in question is found in
Section 3 of Article 10 of the Constitution of the So¬
cialist Trade and Labor Alliance of the United States
and Canada. It is as follows [reading] :
Every general officer, every member of the General Execu¬
tive Board, every officer of an affiliated organization, and every
delegate to a national trade alliance, a district alliance, or
convention of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, shall,
upon entering his functions, take the following pledge, which
shall be read to him and subscribed by him:
“I regard it as a sacred duty of every laboring man, and
especially of anyone who is trusted by his fellow wage workers
with a mission or position in the class struggle, to sever his
affiliation, direct or indirect, with political parties of the capi¬
talist class. I solemnly pledge my word and honor that I shall
obey the constitution, rules and regulations of the Socialist
Trade and Labor Alliance of the United States and Canada,
and that, keeping always in view its fundamental principles
and final aims, I shall to the best of my ability perform the
task assigned to me.”
Mr. Abraham Brozvnstein (Social Democrat). I
want to ask another—
The Speaker [rapping to order]. You will take
your seat, sir. I refuse you the floor. You have abused
the courtesy of the floor when it was extended to you
as the first questioner, by endeavoring to insinuate into
the minds of this audience a false notion with regard
to the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance constitution.
That was a discourtesy to this audience. [Applause.]
It may not be the least of the tasks before the Socialist
Labor Party to teach such as you the elemental prin¬
ciples of propriety in public assemblages. You will take
your seat, sir. [Loud applause.]
Mr. John F. Coyle. Did not George D. Herron
50
preside at a meeting in New York at which the Russian
anarchist Prince Kropotkin spoke?
The Speaker. I don’t know. So many things happen
with the Rev. Social Democrat Herron. [Laughter.]
He has been flitting around, here, there and every¬
where. He posed as a great hero, ready to suffer
martyrdom, when the heroism consisted in dropping a
poor wife, and the martyrdom consisted in taking up
a rich one. Now that, owing to the use the capitalists
are making of the Czolgosz incident, the Socialists are
called upon to show their mettle, the Rev. hero is off
to Egypt to inspect mummies. I don’t know whether he
presided at that anarchist meeting in New York. But
I know this about the Social Democrats in New York:
In that city there was a notorious anarchist, Justus
Schwab by name, a flannel-mouthed ranter. He died
early this year. Social Democrats were foremost among
those who did him honor. The funeral orator was a
Social Democrat, one Alexander Jonas, who is on the
staff of the German Social Democratic organ, the
Volkszeitung. In the course of that funeral oration the
Social Democrat Jonas eulogized the anarchist Schwab,
and apostrophized him: “Thou art a hero.” 12
Mr. A.H. Simpson (anarchist). Can you tell us
when you ever heard Schwab make a speech? To my
12 The exact language used was: "When a learned man
dies, whose significance escapes the masses, but who greatly
benefited the world, then it may happen to be necessary to
call attention to his merits. That, however, Is not the case at
the bier of Justus Schwab. Everyone in New York, aye, every¬
one in the whole United States, knew him, knew who Justus
Schwab was. Despite the vilifications and the slanders of the
capitalist press, the picture of Justus Schwab penetrated
through, and it stands, today, illumined as that of a hero of
freedom.”—New Yorker ‘Volkszeitung,” December 21, 1900.
51
personal knowledge Schwab has been too weak to
speak for the past five years, and has been a physical
wreck. Now I ask you where you have heard him
make a speech. He has been for five years too weak
even to be heard in conversation.
The Speaker. To your “personal knowledge,” eh?
Well, you are mistaken when you say Schwab has been
for five years too weak to be heard even in conversa¬
tion. During the months of January to June, 1899—
that is not five years ago—Schwab was one of the
leading shouters during the series of protracted ses¬
sions that took place in the Volkszeitung Corporation
meetings, when the Schwab crew, mostly now Kanga¬
roo Social Democrats, were trying to dictate to the
Socialist Labor Party what policy it should adopt and
how to conduct its own paper. I was present at those
meetings. Spoke there. Had to speak in German. That
was quite enough of a task upon my jaws. Now then,
your Schwab, who you say was too weak to be heard
in conversation for the past five years, made my task
harder by constant interruptions and shouting at me.
His voice was so far from being a “whisper” that I
was constrained to turn on him at last, and, address¬
ing him as a “lager beer anarchist,” bid him keep or¬
der. [Laughter and applause.]
Are Two Socialist Parties Possible?
Mr. Frank B. Jordan. I would like to ask if it is
an utter impossibility that there should be two Socialist
parties in one nation.
The Speaker. Your question is too broad. It is not
an impossibility in a country like France, where there
is no such thing as a national election in our sense. For
52
instance. In Lille there may be an election, and one in
Nantes. But the candidates set up in Nantes are never
voted for in Lille, and vice versa. Thus there may be
a Socialist party in one place, and another Socialist
party in another, wholly disconnected from each other’s
organization. The same thing holds good in Germany,
Spain, etc. In none of those countries is a candidate
ever run with the whole country as a constituency.
But that is not so in the United States. In the
United States if there were two Socialist parties they
would come into conflict necessarily every four years,
at every Presidential election. My answer, therefore,
is that, in the abstract, it is possible in countries where
there is no national constituency; it is not here in the
United States. I shall go further, however, and say
there are not in the United States two Socialist parties;
there is but one—the Socialist Labor Party. [Ap¬
plause.]
A voice (no name). There are several people who
are asking about the Socialist Labor Party as to just
what it means, and they ask if the Socialist Labor
Party works on the first command of God: “Love
your neighbor as yourself.”
The Speaker. I do not know just what this gentle¬
man is trying to get at. If he means whether the So¬
cialist Labor Party works on the principle of common
politeness between man and man, and aims at the
betterment of the race, that goes without saying. For
the rest, the Socialist Labor Party has its feet planted
upon the earth: its feet are not in the clouds, with
its head down in the dirt. [Laughter and applause.]
Anarchists’ Concepts of “Freedom”
Mr. A.H. Simpson (anarchist). I would like just
53
to put a question, in fairness, in answer to the gentle¬
man. The socialistic theory is that the means of pro¬
duction, the instruments of production, should be in
the hands of the people. Otherwise it is impossible to
prevent exploitation of the people. Now I want to
know if that is not precisely the anarchistic doctrine as
taught by Kropotkin, Reclus, and Malatesta? I men¬
tion them because these three anarchists have preached
that exact doctrine. I wish to know whether you do
not think that Kropotkin, Reclus and Malatesta teach
those doctrines as absolutely as you and Marx do? In
other words, I want to know if the difference between
you and them is not the difference of political wire¬
pulling, and not of principle? I wish to have you answer
that question for the benefit of some anarchists who
are present—whether the Communism of Karl Marx
is not laid out in Kropotkin and other anarchists? And
we are under the impression that it is.
The Speaker. The question is this: Do not the
theories of Reclus, Malatesta and Kropotkin embody
the economics and doctrines of Socialism? And, fur¬
ther, whether the difference is not rather one of tactics
—I would rather call it “tactics” than “wire-pulling.”
My answer is: It is quite likely, nay, it is a fact, that
anarchists quite frequently crib Socialism; but in the
same breath they fly off the handle with theories that
positively fly in the face of the Socialist theories they
had just proclaimed. In that they illustrate the felici¬
tousness of the name they have given themselves; they
bring themselves within the dictionary meaning of
anarchy—disorder.
As to Elisee Reclus, no one who knows what he is
talking about will charge him with being a responsible
54
man on economics or sociology. Reclus was a lovely
character and an eminent geographer.
As to [Errico] Malatesta, the least said of him
the better.
And now, as to [Prince Peter] Kropotkin. He was
recently in New York; delivered an address there. The
Daily People [April 2, 1901] had an article on the
subject. The article placed two passages from that
speech—one a Socialist, the other an anarchist—in
juxtaposition. The two passages were at fisticuffs. The
anarchist lacks the sense of synthesis.
Sticking to Reclus and Kropotkin, whether or not
they desired to abolish exploitation of the people cuts
no figure in determining the quality of anarchy. When
Caesar was assassinated, it was done to the tune of
“freedom,” and to the tune of “freedom” did the
avengers of Caesar slay his slayers.
Forty years ago, I venture to say, it would have
been hard to find anywhere north of the Mason and
Dixon line a Republican ready to do justice to Jeffer¬
son Davis’ abstract sincerity. Jefferson Davis wanted
freedom. Lincoln wanted freedom. Today Jefferson
Davis stands vindicated on the score of his sincerity.
But the freedom Davis wanted was a very different
thing from the freedom that Lincoln wanted. The dif¬
ference was brought out, not by talking for “freedom,”
or talking of “what is freedom,” but by dealing with
the question of how to bring that freedom about. The
method to bring about the freedom which Davis
wanted could not bring about the freedom that Lin¬
coln’s party was after. Consequently, it made no dif¬
ference what name Davis, however sincere, gave to the
freedom he was after. It was put down.
55
Likewise with all those people—the Recluses and
Kropotkins included—who talk about “freeing the
people,” “improving the people’s condition,” etc., and
who seek to establish the point of contact between the
concrete propositions of anarchists and those of So¬
cialism, on the ground that “both want the same ulti¬
mate end.” That conclusion is an assumption. The
historic instances just quoted prove it.
Who would not wish for human happiness? The
question is not whether they are one as to ultimate
wishes. The question is how do they propose to realize
their wishes ?
Take two trees—a pear tree and a crab-apple tree.
Plant them two yards from each other. They both
draw up nourishment from the same soil; they both
live in the same sun; they both breathe in the same
air; the same wind blows upon both; and yet upon the
one tree you will see growing a splendid Bartlett pear,
and upon the other you will find crab apples. What is
it that produces such a vast difference in the fruits that
have drawn identical sustenance? It is the structural
make-up of the two trees: their organizations.
The crab-apple tree produces a crab apple, the pear
tree can never produce a crab apple; he who wants a
pear will not put up with the lingo of the crab apple.
[Applause and laughter.] So it is with the structural
composition of anarchism and Socialism. Whatever the
anarchists’ language may be on the “exploitation of
the people,” what determines the fruit of their tree
is the structure of anarchy, its conception of society.
Now the fruit evolved, or strained, through that struc¬
ture, is not the fruit that Socialism is after. We do not
want it. [Applause.]
56
Indeed, we do not want it. And that we are right
in not wanting it is not merely a theoretic inference of
the reasoning I just presented. That we are right in
not wanting it may be judged from the difference of
the attitude of capitalism toward anarchism and
toward Socialism. Has anyone ever heard of the capi¬
talist class cultivating Socialism? No! For Socialism
they have the correct historic instinct that it will be
their death.
But how about anarchism? The Illinois Staats-Zei-
lung, a capitalist paper of European experience, gave
away the secret when it advised the capitalist State to
cultivate the anarchist larvae as a means of destroying
Socialism. 13 Capitalism may at times be incommoded
by anarchy, annoyed, irritated by it, as a restive
broncho may irritate its master; but capitalism knows
its rule has nothing to fear from anarchy, that the ax
that will behead the tyrant capitalism is held in the
powerful grasp of Socialism. [Great applause and
cheers.]
’3 The following is a faithful rendition in English of the
language of the Illinois “Staats-Zeitung”: “We have always
been of the opinion that it takes the devil to drive out Beelze¬
bub with, that Socialism must be fought with anarchy. The
same as the corn louse and similar insects are driven out by
setting against them other insects that devour them and their
eggs, so should the State cultivate and rear anarchists in the
principal nests of Socialism, and leave to the anarchists the
work of destroying Socialists. The anarchists will do the work
more effectively than either police or district attorneys.”
57
The Police
and the
Anarchists
By PAUL LAF ARGUE
f
The capitalist class, incapable of defending its
riches as it is incapable of acquiring them by labor,
is the first class of the propertied which has made of
the police the most solid pillar of its State and society.
Without haggling or counting the cost it spends money
for that purpose; it covers all the blind and unlawful
brutalities of the police with the mantle of Christian
charity; indeed it even gives them a certain satisfaction
when, now and then, one of their own members is
handled rather roughly by the “eyes of the law,”
because that gives them a foretaste of the treatment
meted out to poor devils and Socialists who have the
misfortune to fall into the heavy and often unclean
hands of the police.
A Police Prefect Confesses
The police, treated like a pampered, spoiled child,
imagine that it is permitted to do almost anything.
And it was thus that it took the liberty of introducing
anarchism into France in order to set it against So¬
cialism, because it was amusing to put the fear of God
in the hearts of the good citizens. A former prefect
of police, M. Andrieux, in his memoirs garrulously
revealed that the police furnished the money needed
for the foundation of the first anarchist paper pub¬
lished in France, which for the information of all and
sundry published recipes for the manufacture of ex¬
plosives and bombs. M. Andrieux revealed, further-
61
moie, that the first anarchist “attentat” [attempt at
assassination], the one directed against the Statue of
Thiers, was set on foot with the knowledge and aid of
the police. But in the eyes of the capitalists the police
is so sublime and sacrosanct an institution that what¬
ever it may do can never be bad. Not only did M.
Andrieux remain entirely unmolested, although by his
own confession he had organized anarchist plots, but
no one in the government or the “loyal” press even
faintly reproached him for having done so. The most
they did was to regret his ruthless revelations. The
bouigeois papers have always exhibited a certain fond¬
ness, not to say tenderness, for the anarchists, and they
always encouraged their attacks upon the Socialists.
Only last year the Figaro gloatingly published a long
polemic screed of the anarchist Cohen against Bebel,
Liebknecht and the entire German Social Democracy.
On the side it may be observed that the paper most
liberally paid M. Cohen for his slanders.
The police had entertained the comfortable illusion
that it could hold the anarchists in leash at its pleasure.
The intention was to use them solely against the Social¬
ists, to hinder the agitation of the latter, disperse their
meetings, to invade the editorial offices of Socialist
papers arms in hand and to treat their editors with
knives and revolvers. So long as the anarchists stuck
to that role, working in the service of social reaction,
they remained unmolested. The police had orders by
no means to interfere when a band of anarchists as¬
saulted a Socialist, even if the latter happened to be a
municipal councilor. The present Deputy Rouanet, for
instance, who formerly was a municipal councilor in
62
Paris, was attacked by a gang of anarchists under the
leadership of the stool pigeon Martinet, and was
knocked down and kicked. The policemen who wit¬
nessed the scene permitted the assault and went their
way, declaring with lofty, philosophic calm that “the
gentlemen should settle the matter among themselves.”
The Anarchists Take Too Much for Granted
This so Christian tolerance of the police made the
anarchists bold. They began thereupon to translate
their individualistic theories about property into prac¬
tice, plundered show windows and stores, broke into
the houses of rich bourgeois and cleaned them out and,
if they met with resistance, resorted to knife and re¬
volver. The capitalists did not want to put up with
that kind of theft. It looked rather too barbarous to
them. The police was therefore faced by the necessity
of arresting its hand-fed anarchist boys and arraigning
them in the courts. The judges then had no choice but
to sentence them just like common thieves and mur¬
derers. But such procedure produced a deep moral in¬
dignation among the “comrades”; and they went after
the judges as though they had been Social Democrats.
The anarchist appetite having been thus stimulated,
they aimed higher: Vaillant threw his bomb into the
Chamber of Deputies and Caserio assassinated Carnot. 1
The police, having been encouraged by ministers
and politicians to use the anarchists against the Social¬
ists, did not lose its nice equipoise when the knights of
the dagger and bomb had robbed private persons, and
sent judges and witnesses for the prosecution from
1 Marie Francois Sadi Carnot, fourth President of the French
Republic.
63
this into a better world. But the police found that the
joke had been carried too far when the anarchists
menaced also the lives of politicians. The Deputies,
trembling with fear, demanded anti-anarchist laws and
an increase of the police budgets. These gentlemen
knew full well that the police, directly or indirectly, is
involved as an accomplice in all these attempted mur¬
ders which so terribly frighten the good bourgeois.
Nevertheless, so deeply ingrained in them is the respect
for this worthy institution that they dare not utter the
slightest censure nor ask for an investigation of its
actions. They were anxious not to incur its disfavor
and, instead, sedulously endowed it with new prerog¬
atives and privileges. With folded hands they sup¬
plicated that laudable institution to protect them against
the dynamite and daggers of the anarchists.
Politicians and capitalist press organs, arm in arm
applauded the police when it let loose the anarchists
in older to hamper Socialist agitation. The bourgeois
papers took great pains to depict, in minute detail, the
stormy scenes the anarchist “comrades” caused at So
cialist meetings. Gleefully they exclaimed: “Here you
can see how the Socialists deal with one another.”
Eageily they spread among the public the falsehood
that between anarchism and Socialism there was no
essential difference. Anarchism, they said, is the logical
sequence of Socialism, the anarchists are courageous
people who have the consistency to translate their
theories into practice; the Socialists, however, are
hypocritical, mendacious anarchists who, because of
cowardice or ambition, dare not draw all the con¬
sequences of their theories. These tactics were not
64
without success, for during a long time a large part
of the public held the Socialists responsible for the
idiocies the anarchists uttered and for the crimes they
committed.
Anarchism and Capitalist Individualism
Are Alike
The Socialists endeavored to put an end to this
ominous confusion, surreptitiously nurtured and main¬
tained by the capitalist press. They proved that the
anarchist theories were the result of the economic
laissez-faire, laissez-passer , 2 the legitimate offspring of
bourgeois individualism; that the anarchists would
operate only through individual action, while the So¬
cialists expected success only through the action of the
organized proletariat; that the anarchists fulminated
against the suffrage, while the Socialists utilized it in
order to penetrate legislative and administrative bodies
to the great terror of the bourgeois politicians; that
the anarchists preached the propaganda of the deed
and the murderous action of the autonomous individual,
while the Socialists would sanction only the propaganda
of the idea and disapproved of bloodthirsty speeches
as much as of dynamite-filled cooking pots, because
the thievery of the anarchists and their blindly brutal
dynamite outrages would not aid in the solution of the
social problem but, on the contrary, would retard it
for the reason that they excited the indignation of all
2The full phrase, “laissez faire et passer, le monde va de
lui-meme,” may be translated, “let alone [do not interfere];
the world revolves of itself.’’ As used by capitalism’s really
rugged individualists (as opposed to those who have learned
that reforms pay off), the phrase means: no interference;
absolutely uncontrolled industrial and commercial competition.
65
the efficient members of the proletariat. But the poli¬
ticians figured with just that indignation so that the
Socialists might be compromised in the eyes of public
opinion and in the courts be sentenced as common
criminals. When, in 1882, Guesde, Dormov and La-
fargue faced the Court of Sessions at Moulins, and
were sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, the pros¬
ecuting attorney of the Republic read to the court ar¬
ticles from an anarchist paper which had been founded
with the money of the police.
.This confusion of ideas about anarchism and So¬
cialism, so hurtful to Socialist agitation, lasted long
enough and would have lasted still longer had it not
been for later outrages which clarified public opinion
as to the true state of affairs. Facts which otherwise
would have received no attention were drawn into a
glaring light and became generally conspicuous. All the
dynamite heroes, who either practiced or approved of
the propaganda of the deed, professed implacable
hatred against the best-known champions of Socialism;
they abused them, called them “bellwethers” and
“popes,” just as the capitalists themselves called the
same men “inciters,” and even threatened well-known
Socialists with death. The books from which the an¬
archists claim to have derived their hatred of bourgeois
society had been written by savants and philosophers
who enjoy great renown in the bourgeois world, such
as Darwin, Haeckel and Herbert Spencer. 3 Never did
^Herbert Spencer was the philosopher and propagandist of
capitalist anarchy. He damned any interference with capital¬
ism’s operations and held that the hardships of capitalism
were the “effort of nature” to get rid of the “unfit” among the
66
an anarchist quote Marx, Engels or any other Socialist
writer. The modern theoreticians of anarchism, such
as Elisee Reclus and Kropotkin, exhibit the same su¬
preme contempt for the scientific achievements of Karl
Marx as do the bourgeois political economists; in their
sentimental, bombastic and forced dissertations not
even his name is mentioned. If a certain doctrine could
be held responsible that anarchism germinated and
developed in the embittered minds of people who, in
capitalist society, belong to the defeated and down¬
trodden, then it ought to be the biologic theory of
the struggle for existence, which is but the counter¬
part and complement of the free competition theory
of the political economists. The materialist conception
of history of Marx and Engels has absolutely no con¬
nection with anarchism; it shows how the development
of economic conditions, which govern man and society,
proceeds and necessarily leads to Communism.
The Anarchists’ Friends Were Capitalists,
Not Socialists!
The police itself contributed to do away with the
confusion of ideas it had so industriously maintained.
On Jan. 1, of the current year [ 1895 ], a few weeks
after Vaillant had thrown his bomb, the Minister of
the Interior, Raynal, caused 2,000 arrests and dom-
capitalists and workers. The general capitalist acceptance of
ruthlessly ragged individualism was so widespread, and Spen¬
cer's philosophical and propagandistic influence was so great,
that even Darwin, on occasion, confused the “survival of the
fittest" (Spencer's phrase) in a state of nature with survival
—the good and bad fortune of capitalists, and the desperate
plight of workers—in society. Ernst Heinrich Haeckel helped
to initiate “social Darwinism," a misapplication of biology to
society.
6 7
iciliary searches to be made. The residences of all the
known anarchists were suddenly and thoroughly gone
through, and all the documents found were sequestered.
The Minister of the Interior had hoped to dig up facts
on the strength of which the impression could be cre¬
ated that a giant conspiracy existed in which the So¬
cialists were also implicated. He imagined that among
the documents seized there could or would be found
letters and other writings of known Socialists, from
which might be deduced intimate collaboration and se¬
cret connections between anarchists and Socialists.
M. Raynal experienced a cruel disappointment. Not
even the most harmless letter of a Socialist was found
in possession of the anarchists; but, on the contrary,
all the letters of the anarchists were brimming over
with abuse of and threats against Socialists. The raids
of the police proved, clip and clear, that anarchists
and Socialists in neither their private life nor in their
public activity were in any way connected; but that, con¬
trariwise, they faced each other as foes in every respect.
However, even if the efforts of the police to hang
the anarchists to the coat tails of the Socialists suffered
shipwreck, a discovery was made which compensated
for the failure and which nobody had expected. Among
the papers of the best-known anarchists were found let¬
ters from priests, stock exchange kings, dukes and
other persons as prominent as they were reactionary.
These letters contained expressions of thanks and ad¬
vised of the remittance of money. It appeared that the
syndicate of Paris brokers possessed a special fund for
the support of the anarchists for the purpose of pre¬
venting a repetition of the pistol shot which the anarch-
68
ist Gallace a few years ago fired in the exchange. An¬
archism had become a lucrative business and smart
people exploited the terror inspired by the crimes of
the fanatics. Sebastian Faure, formerly the clerk of a
stockbroker, was the go-between who managed things
for the brokers and anarchists. This circumstance ex¬
plains perhaps the 500 franc notes which Faure so often
changed, and which probably came from the “Fund
for the Timely Prevention of Dynamite Accidents,”
because for years past nobody knew how Faure made
his living. Thus the police had caught the bankers of
the anarchists. Evidently, it gave publicity to its dis¬
coveries in order to clear itself of the charge of having
supplied Vaillant with the 100 francs he had required
for the manufacture of his bomb. At the trial, the
judge inquired about the source of that 100 francs so
cautiously and so forbearingly that the public did not
hesitate to regard the charge as perfectly true.
Anarchists’ Violence Justified
By Clerical Politicians
Press and politicians assert that Socialism is the
advance fruit of anarchism; one begins with being a
collectivist and, if only logical, courageous and sin¬
cere enough, unfailingly winds up an adherent of dyna¬
mite. The assertion was not a happy one. A strange
and unfortunate accident willed it that the anarchists
who distinguished themselves through the propaganda
of the idea and the propaganda of the deed almost
without exception had been educated by clergymen. 4
4 See Daniel De Leon’s analysis of this subject in “Socialism
Versus Anarchism.”
69
Sebastian Faure, the most phrase-mongering an¬
archist speaker, who held meetings throughout France
at which he called for deeds of force with extraor¬
dinary vehemence, spent his youth in the priests’ semi¬
nary in St. Etienne. After the death of his father, at
the age of twenty-five, when he was about to be or¬
dained a priest, he left it to enter upon a business career
wherein he blew in the fortune of his wife. Despite his
vociferous activity as an anarchist, he remained in
close touch with the clergy, and in the cities where he
agitated had confabs with the local priests.
Cyvoct, at present sojourning in a bagnio, belongs
to the Catholic Union in Lyon; he was still a member
of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul when he first
appeared as an anarchist speaker. Ravachol and Var¬
iant had had a religious upbringing. Caserio was con¬
spicuous by his fervent piety. At the seminary where he
spent hiis childhood he was called “il santo” (the saint),
and up to his fifteenth year he functioned at mass as
choir boy.
It is characteristic that among the many persons
arrested for having openly approved of the assassina¬
tion of Carnot, there was found not a single Socialist
but there were some clergymen. One of them indulged
in exalted praise of Caserio and expressed regret that
he could not send him money. The clergy hated Carnot,
whom they regarded as a freemason; on the very day
of his death, the Catholic paper, La Croix du Nord
(The Cross of the North), contained an article leveled
at the President of the Republic, prophesying that
“his earthly days were numbered.”
At all times the church has maintained that it has
70
the right to judge and condemn kings and princes. In
the middle ages it deposed potentates; the Jesuits
placed the dagger in the hands of the murderers of
Henry III and Henry IV of France; as Pascal has
proved in his “Lettres Provinciates ” (“Provincial Let¬
ters”), the most eminent savants defended the maxim
“that one could wish for the death of persons who are
about to persecute us,” and, furthermore, the death
of “persons who injure our goods and our honor, of
false witnesses who testify against us, and of judges
who unjustly sentence us.”
Who knows but what these teachings are in some
heads effective to this very day? At any rate, the works
characterized by Pascal have never been condemned
by the Pope. Moreover, does not the Old Testament
glorify Judith because she gave herself up to the Assy¬
rian general, Plolofernes, made him drunk and then
killed him? Who knows whether or not this tragic tale,
which Caserio learned in his childhood, filled him with
the courage to assassinate Carnot?
SOCIALIST INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM
i
In a revolutionary period in history, when man¬
kind must choose between an outworn social order and
a new order, the question HOW becomes every bit as
important as the question WHAT.
The great social question of our age which de¬
mands immediate solution is: Are we going to keep
the system of private ownership of the socially oper¬
ated industries? Shall we attempt to preserve a social
system that has proved its incapacity to solve the prob¬
lem of poverty in the midst of plenty? Shall we pro¬
long the life of a society in which a few own all the
means of wealth production, in which labor-saving
machinery, instead of lightening labor’s toil, throws
workers out of their jobs on to the industrial scrap
heap? Must mankind pass through endless vicious
cycles of depression, crisis and war? Or shall we do
the common-sense thing, make the means of produc¬
tion our collective property, abolish exploitation of
the many by the few, and use our productive genius
to create leisure and abundance for all in peace and
freedom?
Once it is agreed that society must be recon¬
structed, then there are certain things we must under¬
stand. The first is that we can expect no help whatso-
75
ever from the beneficiaries of capitalism. Here and
there a capitalist may see the handwriting on the wall
and join with the workers, but as a class the capitalists,
like the slave-owning and feudal classes before them,
will strive to prolong their poverty-ridden, war-breed¬
ing system. The workers of hand and brain must build
this new world and emancipate themselves through
their own classconscious efforts.
The second thing we must understand is this:
Though the workers are in the overwhelming majority,
and have tremendous potential power, they can apply
their collective strength to the task at hand only
through organization.
How must the American workers organize to ef¬
fect their emancipation?
We have a Constitution that provides for its own
amendment, or, in other words, that legalizes revolu¬
tion. In the language of Abraham Lincoln: “The right
of peaceable assembly and petition and by Article V
of the Constitution—the right of amendment—is the
constitutional substitute for [armed] revolution.”
This means that by organizing politically the work¬
ing class places itself firmly upon the institutions of
civilization, and avails itself fully of the constitutional
right of political agitation and the ballot. This is the
peaceful method. It permits the forces of progress to
proclaim their purpose in the broad-open day, and
there mobilize themselves for political victory and
the conquest of the capitalist political State.
But no ruling class in history has ever willingly
relinquished its power and privileges. There is nothing
7 6
in the history of our own ruling class to indicate that
it differs in this respect from the slave-owning and feu¬
dal classes of old. Therefore, behind the Socialist
ballot the workers must organize a power capable of
enforcing its mandate. Socialist Industrial Unionism
is that power. Unlike AFL-CIO unionism, which
boasts of being a bulwark of capitalism, Socialist In¬
dustrial Unionism declares its intention to abolish
class rule.
The source of all power is economic. Armies,
particularly modern armies, cannot operate unless they
are constantly supplied with a multitude of items
which flow uninterruptedly from industry. Although
an army is a military power, it is dependent on indus¬
try, hence on the workers who operate industry.
Modern capitalist production has achieved such
magnitude that it has greatly expanded the potential
economic power of the workers. This is true because
the workers run industry from top to bottom and are,
therefore, in the best strategic position to take posses¬
sion. “Take possession” is precisely what we must do
in an orderly and yet resolute manner the moment the
victory at the polls is proclaimed. This is not a general
strike that gets the workers out of the industries the
source of their power—and into the streets where
they may be clubbed, gassed and shot, but a GEN¬
ERAL LOCKOUT OF THE CAPITALIST
CLASS!
Finally, the Socialist Industrial Union supplies the
instrument for the administration of production under
the Industrial Republic of Labor. It is at once “the
77
battering ram with which to pound down the fortress
of capitalism, and the successor of the capitalist social
structure itself.”
II
The idea of Industrial Union Government is
Daniel De Leon’s crowning contribution to social sci¬
ence, and specifically to Socialism. He projected and
developed the third “great plan of government,” the
Socialist Industrial Republic, which will replace the
outmoded political State (government over men
through territorial constituencies), and establish the
Marxian “administration of things.” This is the non¬
political government of democratic, industrial repre¬
sentation and administration.
It is important to note that Industrial Union Gov¬
ernment is an entirely new concept of social admin¬
istration. It implies an entirely new basis of repre¬
sentation. Instead of Senators and Representatives
from states and congressional areas, it is based on in¬
dustrial constituencies and functional representatives
from the industries and social services. The qualifica¬
tions of these representatives elected to the All-Indus¬
trial Union Congress will be a knowledge and un¬
derstanding of the processes of production and dis¬
tribution, ability to coordinate and direct these pro¬
cesses, and a dedication to the duties and responsibili¬
ties with which they are charged.
The workers who operate the industries today
under capitalism will, of course, operate them under
Socialism. Voting in the plants and shops, they will
78
elect their supervisors, administrative committees and
representatives to local, departmental and national in¬
dustrial councils, and, finally, to the All-Industrial Un¬
ion Congress, representation, accordingly, being on an
ascending scale, and not from the top down.
We do not presume to make a rigid blueprint of
the Industrial Union Administration, provide details,
or lay down arbitrary lines of demarcation. These will
be the tasks of the free workers under Socialism. But
the general outline is clearly defined in the methods
and processes of production itself.
For a more complete treatment of this subject,
the reader is referred to Daniel De Leon’s great work,
“Socialist Reconstruction of Society,” and other So¬
cialist Labor Party publications.
79
FIFTEEN QUESTIONS ABOUT SOCIALISM, by Daniel
De Leon (128 pp.—Price 60 cents, postpaid.) This
pamphlet provides a “preview” of the economic opera¬
tions of the Socialist society. It answers such ques¬
tions as: How will the incomes of workers be deter¬
mined under Socialism? The answers to the questions,
which were proposed by a Catholic priest who sought
to put the Socialists “on the spot,” are an indictment
of capitalism as well as a scientific exposition of So¬
cialist economics.
ABOLITION OF POVERTY, by Daniel De Leon. (Price 35
cents postpaid.) The essays in this pamphlet were
prompted by a Jesuit’s attack on Socialism. In an¬
swering the attack, De Leon went deeply into the ma¬
terialist conception of history and contrasted that con¬
ception’s socially beneficent results with the anti-social
results of the so-called idealist conception. “Abolition
of Poverty” is one of the most important works of
Socialist literature.
Prices subject to change; send for catalogue.
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MARXISM VS. SOVIET DESPOTISM
By Arnold Petersen
Discusses the impact of De Leon’s ideas on Lenin;
shows that aspects of “Leninism” are in conflict with
Marx’s principles; and exposes as utterly false the
Kremlin’s boast that there is Socialism in Russia. Includes
an article by Arnold Petersen, written shortly after the
Bolshevik Revolution, in which it was pointed out that
Socialism could not triumph in a country as backward as
Russia was in 1917. Events have fully vindicated this
forecast.
56 pages—Price 25 cents postpaid
SOCIALIST LANDMARKS
By Daniel De Leon
This work is a systematic analysis of capitalism and of
Socialism. It contains De Leon’s famous addresses: “Reform
or Revolution,” “What Means This Strike?” “The Burning
Question of Trades Unionism,” and “Socialist Reconstruc¬
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